Conquer the Flames (Langs Down) (8 page)

“Macklin,” Mrs. Lang scolded, coming up to the table with a plate of food, “you’ve talked that boy’s ear off and haven’t let him get breakfast yet. Really! I’m ashamed of you.”

“Sorry, Mum,” Macklin said as she handed the plate to Thorne.

Thorne smothered a laugh. Macklin wouldn’t appreciate it, and Thorne had no desire to forfeit the rapport he seemed to be building with the men on the station, the kind of camaraderie he hadn’t known with anyone other than Walker in years. It might not lead to anything, but for the first time in twenty years, Thorne had found a place where he could consider staying.

With a shake of his head at his own dreams, he dug into the plate of eggs and bacon. It was delicious, as every meal had been on the station, and he took the time to say so to Mrs. Lang on his way out of the canteen.

“Oh, please, call me Sarah,” she said. “Everyone else does.”

He ran into Ian right outside the canteen. “I heard you’re going to Taylor Peak.”

“Jeremy didn’t have any luck getting through to them, so I thought I’d try my hand,” Thorne said. “It’s a lot harder to dismiss someone from the RFS than it is to dismiss an estranged brother out of spite.”

“Be careful,” Ian warned. “I know you can take care of yourself, but there’s a lot more to the history between the stations than just Jeremy choosing to live here instead of there. Taylor has a lot of hatred built up and no outlet for it.”

“I’ll be careful,” Thorne promised, “but you have to do the same if you get to the fire line before I’m back. Pay attention to the way the wind is blowing. That’s your best indicator of where the fire will move next, and whatever you do, don’t let it get behind you.”

Ian smiled, the expression so soft it transformed his careworn face into something sweet and innocent again. Thorne almost leaned down to kiss him, the need for it an ache in his chest, but he had no indication Ian would welcome his attentions, and he didn’t want to lose the friendship they were developing.

He spent another couple of seconds getting lost in the kelly green of Ian’s eyes before he took a step back and made himself head toward his ute. He debated calling the captain now, but he would have more information after he talked to Williams and could still alert the captain before the Lang Downs crew reached the front.

T
AYLOR
P
EAK
was everything Lang Downs was not: sprawling, almost industrialized, built up to the point of obscuring the land the station proper sat on. It was also unkempt, with roads full of potholes and none of the signs of an established community that Thorne had seen the moment he arrived at Lang Downs. No one had flowers growing outside the houses that dotted the area. No children played in the grassy areas between buildings. Taylor Peak might be a successful station, but it wasn’t a home. Thorne didn’t blame Jeremy for preferring Lang Downs to the station where he grew up.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Williams,” Thorne said to the man who approached his ute. “I was told he’s the foreman here.”

“He’s over there,” the man said. “The one without the hat.”

Thorne scanned the men near one of the large outbuildings until he found the one he was looking for. “Thank you. I’ll go talk to him.”

Thorne pocketed his keys and headed toward the group of men, well aware of the stares that followed him. He kept his stride even and deliberate, projecting an aura of strength and authority. It had got him out of fixes in the past. Hopefully it would help him now. These men weren’t hostile, just distrustful of strangers. Thorne could work with that. He had a reason to be here and no reason to pick a fight. He was a neutral party.

Except, of course, that he wasn’t. He’d thrown his lot in with the men of Lang Downs from the moment he’d first shook Caine’s and Macklin’s hands. The jackaroos in front of him didn’t know that, though, and he didn’t plan on telling them.

“Mr. Williams?” he asked politely when he neared the man who’d been pointed out.

“I’m Williams. And you are?”

“Thorne Lachlan from the RFS. I’m with the company that’s fighting the grassfires north and east of here,” he said, offering his hand. Williams shook it with the same solid grip Thorne had appreciated from Caine and Macklin. “The captain sent me to apprise the stations in the line of the fires, to warn them and see what assistance we could count on from them.”

“You’ll have already been to Lang Downs, then,” Williams said.

“I just came from there,” Thorne replied. “They’re gathering men and supplies now. I expect to find them at the front by the time I make it back there.”

Williams humphed. “Don’t tell the boss that,” he said. “Don’t mention them at all. I’ll send everyone we can spare because the fire’s too close already, but if the boss hears any mention of them, he’ll order me not to send help, and that’s just plain stupid.”

“I don’t see any reason to mention anything to the boss if silence will get the help we need,” Thorne replied. “How long do you need to get things ready?”

“I can have men with shovels and rakes in half an hour. Loading the jugs onto the utes takes longer, but we can go in two waves,” Williams said. “I can’t send everyone. We have to run the station too, but I can send twenty men at least.”

“Any help is appreciated,” Thorne replied diplomatically even as he compared the reaction here to the one he’d received at Lang Downs. Caine and Macklin had ordered all but a skeleton crew to the front lines. Molly, Carley, Kami, Sarah, and four jackaroos would stay behind on the station. Everyone else was already on the way to the fire line.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Williams said, “and I don’t blame you, but until the fires are threatening our land, I can’t do any more. I value my job too much to lose it.”

“Any help is better than none,” Thorne repeated. “I’ll lead the first group when they’re ready, and the second group can join us as soon as they get the utes outfitted.”

Williams nodded and turned to the gathered men, issuing orders right and left. The men scattered at his command, and Thorne stepped back to let them work.

It had taken him a good two hours to get to Taylor Peak, and it would take another two to get to the fire line. From here, they could go faster by the main roads rather than going through the tablelands, but even so, Ian and the others would reach the front before he did. He itched to get on the road, to minimize the amount of time Ian spent fighting without Thorne there to watch his back.

He thought back to the tense moment right before he left. Ian’s smile had been different. Thorne had seen quite a few expressions on Ian’s face last night, and this morning as they watched the sunrise, but Ian hadn’t smiled like that before. Soft and intimate and almost inviting. If Thorne didn’t know better, he’d take that smile as permission. He couldn’t do that, though. However much he liked Ian—and the more time they spent together, the more he liked him—he couldn’t offer anything, and Ian deserved better than a night of meaningless sex. Thorne was too fucked up to even think of anything more than that, even if he were in a position to stay beyond the duration of the fire threat. Even so, he wanted to see that look on Ian’s face again. More than that, he wanted to know if he really had read invitation in those green eyes, and if he had, he wanted to know what Ian smelled like, what he tasted like, what noises he would make as Thorne made love to him. God, he could imagine it already, and the thought made his body react

He shifted uncomfortably, trying to redirect his thoughts. He couldn’t spring a boner in the middle of Taylor Peak while he was waiting for them to pack up equipment to help fight the fires, and he certainly couldn’t afford to have those thoughts in his head when he reached the fire line, where a moment’s distraction could mean the difference between putting out the fire and getting burned alive.

He focused instead on everything Ian had said and not said about his past. He’d hoarded every scrap of information like a dragon hoards its gold. Thorne didn’t know what had happened to Ian’s family, but they were clearly estranged and probably by Ian’s choice, if the scorn in his voice when speaking about them was any indication. The question was when the estrangement had occurred and why, and Ian hadn’t said anything to answer those questions. He also had noticeably not mentioned any of the women on the station when he described them as family. Thorne hoped that meant no sweetheart tucked away somewhere. The omission didn’t make Ian gay, although the almost-kiss was a strong indicator in his favor, but it did mean his heart wasn’t already spoken for.

Thorne hoped it meant that, anyway. Perhaps Ian was just incredibly private.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath as he stalked back toward his ute. He was going in circles, and it wasn’t getting him anywhere except closer to a headache. He needed to be thinking about the grassfires, not about Ian and whether or not he had a girlfriend stashed away somewhere, and if he didn’t, if he might be interested in Thorne instead.

He climbed in the cab of the ute and resisted the urge to beat his head against the steering wheel. It wouldn’t solve anything and would just add to his brewing headache. Instead he grabbed the satellite phone and called the captain to give him an update.

“Grant.”

“Captain, it’s Lachlan,” Thorne said. “I have a report for you.”

“Let’s have it,” the captain said.

“Lang Downs is as ready as I can make it. We finished the rest of the firebreak yesterday, as expected. There are about fifty men with equipment, including makeshift fire trucks, on their way to you. They should be there any time. I’m at Taylor Peak now, the adjacent station. They’ve committed another twenty men including a few more modified utes,” Thorne reported.

“Good work,” Grant said. “What’s the ETA for the Taylor Peak crew?”

“We should be leaving here in the next fifteen to thirty minutes,” Thorne said. “Then two hours to get there. It’ll take longer for them to outfit the utes, so the first wave won’t be the full complement of troops. I’ll report back with the first group from Taylor Peak. I’ve been gone too long as it is.”

“You weren’t sitting around with your thumb up your arse,” Grant said. “You were getting assistance we desperately need.”

“It’ll still be good to be back in the action, sir,” Thorne said.

“See you in two,” Grant said.

“Yes, sir,” Thorne replied before ending the call.

Six

I
AN
sat next to Neil in one of the station’s utes as they bounced north across the outback toward the property line and beyond that to a section of unused land where the fires burned. It wasn’t the first time fire had threatened Lang Downs in the time he’d been there and it wouldn’t be the last, he was sure, but that didn’t make it any easier. He worked with wood. Fire was his natural enemy, and as they continued on, he couldn’t help but think of all the hours he’d spent working with wood for the station. Every house had some touch of his hand, either in the furniture or in building the house itself. Almost every room in the bunkhouse was the same. He’d spent fifteen years pouring his friendship and affection into those pieces, and all it would take was for the flames to jump the firebreak and it would all be gone in an instant.

“Williams isn’t a fool, no matter what I think of Taylor,” Neil said beside him. “He’ll send anyone he can spare.”

“I’m not worried about Williams,” Ian said.

“Worried about Thorne, then?” Neil asked in surprise. “He’s carved from stone, that one, hard as a rock and immovable as the mountains. Nobody’s going to take a swing at him and get away with it.”

“He was a Commando,” Ian said. “The most highly trained special forces we have in Australia, and now he’s fighting fires with a volunteer corps. Does anything about that strike you as odd?”

“Maybe he just needed a break,” Neil said. “People get tired sometimes.”

“He slept on my couch last night,” Ian said slowly. “He almost had another breakdown in the canteen. Too many people, too much noise, I don’t know what, but he asked me to get him out of there, so I took him back to my place. No kids, no dog, no wife to disturb the peace. Just him and me and the view. We got to talking eventually. Sort of.”

“He’s not the talkative type?”

“No, definitely the strong, silent type.”

“Not bad-looking, either, if you like that sort of thing,” Neil observed.

“Should I warn Molly?” Ian teased, hoping to throw Neil off the scent.

“No, I like my women with… well, I like women. I was thinking about you.”

“Me?” Ian said. “Why me?”

“Because you’ve shown more interest in this guy in one day than I’ve ever seen you show anyone, mate,” Neil said. “I’m your friend. You know it makes no difference to me. Caine and Macklin taught me that, and Sam finished the job. Hell, he made me accept a bloody Taylor in my family. After that, it’s all a piece of cake.”

“I know,” Ian said. “If I were interested in someone that way, I wouldn’t be afraid to tell you because it was a guy. I’m just not interested in anyone.”

“Why not?” Neil asked. “I mean, I understand if you’ve never met someone on the station who catches your eye, but you never seem to go looking anywhere else either.”